"kills on sight," because this kindred peril
was invisible, and might lurk anywhere. New poles were put up, and
the lighting circuits on them, with but a slight insulation of cotton
impregnated with some "weather-proof" compound, straggled all over the
city exposed to wind and rain and accidental contact with other wires,
or with the metal of buildings. So many fatalities occurred that the
insulated wire used, called "underwriters," because approved by the
insurance bodies, became jocularly known as "undertakers," and efforts
were made to improve its protective qualities. Then came the overhead
circuits for distributing electrical energy to motors for operating
elevators, driving machinery, etc., and these, while using a lower,
safer potential, were proportionately larger. There were no wires
underground. Morse had tried that at the very beginning of electrical
application, in telegraphy, and all agreed that renewals of the
experiment were at once costly and foolish. At last, in cities like
New York, what may be styled generically the "overhead system" of wires
broke down under its own weight; and various methods of underground
conductors were tried, hastened in many places by the chopping down of
poles and wires as the result of some accident that stirred the public
indignation. One typical tragic scene was that in New York, where,
within sight of the City Hall, a lineman was killed at his work on
the arc light pole, and his body slowly roasted before the gaze of the
excited populace, which for days afterward dropped its silver and copper
coin into the alms-box nailed to the fatal pole for the benefit of his
family. Out of all this in New York came a board of electrical
control, a conduit system, and in the final analysis the Public
Service Commission, that is credited to Governor Hughes as the furthest
development of utility corporation control.

The "road to yesterday" back to Edison and his insistence on underground
wires is a long one, but the preceding paragraph traces it. Even
admitting that the size and weight of his low-tension conductors
necessitated putting them underground, this argues nothing against the
propriety and sanity of his methods. He believed deeply and firmly in
the analogy between electrical supply and that for water and gas, and
pointed to the trite fact that nobody hoisted the water and gas mains
into the air on stilts, and that none of the pressures were inimical
to human safety. The arc-ligh